Ecommerce Re-Platform

Re-Platforming, Done Right

With the explosive growth of ecommerce, the rapid development of new technologies, and the ever-growing competition, ebusinesses face multiple new challenges. To stay on top, they need to continuously improve not only the user experience, but also the performance and the back-office efficiency of their site. What’s more: They need to create an integrated omni-channel environment to seamlessly support their customers across various platforms throughout the entire purchasing cycle. And they need to integrate a rapidly increasing number of third-party solutions.

More often than not, existing ecommerce platforms are simply not up for the job. That is why re-platforming, or in other words, migrating to a more powerful platform has become the ‘trend du jour’ in the ecommerce industry. Indeed over 60% of online businesses are planning to re-platform within the next two years, and more than 10% have already started the process. But what exactly is involved in re-platforming? Does it even work? And if so, how?

Understanding the business concept behind re-platforming

Re-platforming supports the shift from a channel-specific to an operation-centric ebusiness. In other words, it enables you to serve your customers whenever and wherever they choose to engage with you, be it through your website, your mobile site, your brick and mortar store, your catalogue, or your social media presences. Benefits include automatic adaptability to any screen, optimized page load-times, maximum up-times, and top performance regardless of date, time, and number of users. On the front-end, re-platforming enhances the customer experience with an intuitive user interface and fresh, valuable content. On the back-end, it offers seamless integration of all processes and improves administration efficiencies. Of course, re-platforming also provides maximum scalability to accommodate future needs.

Realistically assessing the benefits of re-platforming for your business

At ECommerce Partners, we know that re-platforming bears tremendous business potential. It can dramatically increase conversion rates and average order values, boost site performance and cross-channel interactions, and drive customer acquisition and retention all while decreasing total cost of ownership. But we also know that re-platforming projects are challenging. They cause a major upheaval in existing ebusinesses, deal a temporary hit to KPIs, and can, at times, be avoided.

That is why, we always suggest starting the process by thoroughly evaluating your existing site and assessing whether, when, and how to re-platform it. Our job is to support you at every step of the way and advise you exactly as to how you should proceed.

Succeeding with ecommerce re-platforming

Once the decision to re-platform your existing ebusiness has been taken, we will guide you through the entire process:

Develop a strategy: First, we will help you set and prioritize your goals, develop a project roadmap, and define your budget and timetable. This way, you can monitor the progress and flexibly adapt the project scope, as needed.

Get everyone on board: Then, we will help you assemble a strong, responsive cross-departmental team for project reviews and decision making purposes. After all, re-platforming does not only concern your IT department and should not only be embraced by your engineers. Rather, it is a project that affects the entire organization. Throughout the project, we will also help you to manage expectations by clearly communicating goals and success metrics to all parties involved.

Select the technology: While there likely is no single platform that does it all, we will help you to select the one that best fits your business needs.

Create a proof of concept: We will make sure you are on the right track by putting your functional and technical assumptions to the test with your target audience before development starts.

Plan the launch date carefully: Since re-platforming will most likely cause KPIs to drop temporarily, it is important to consider the best possible launch date. We will help you pick the right season and moment in your sales cycle.

Stay agile: Re-platforming is often a work in progress and needs to be implemented with maximum agility in mind. Small changes and adjustments to the initial concept are almost always necessary in the field, and we will ensure that you can flexibly accommodate them.

Test, analyze, and improve: Once the new platform is in place, we will help you test and analyse overall performance, front and back-end functionality and third-party solution integration to ensure everything works according to plan. We will also support regular A/B and multivariate tests to further optimize the performance of your ebusiness.

Struggling with the decision to re-platform? Get additional, pertinent information. Download our latest complimentary white paper below on the benefits and challenges of re-platforming.

Interested in re-platforming and looking for a partner who has the proven experience and expertise to guide you successfully through the entire process? Call or email us. We’ll be happy to help.

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Customer Testimonial

About Us

About ECommerce Partners:Founded in 1998, ECommerce Partners is a full-service, ecommerce and interactive agency headquartered in New York City. Best known for our unique process methodology, we combine Internet expertise, creative talent, and business know-how to help clients across a variety of industries achieve rapid, measurable online marketing results.

True to our motto, "We build businesses, not just websites," we provide large and mid-sized companies with a full range of Internet marketing, website design and ecommerce solutions geared to maximize online revenues.